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Indiana Fever visit White House

WASHINGTON -- No, the Indiana Fever weren't the biggest winners during their honorary visit to the White House on Friday for winning the 2012 WNBA championship. Nor were the DePauw Tigers, who tagged along for

WASHINGTON -- The Indiana Fever weren't the biggest winners during their honorary visit to the White House on Friday for winning the 2012 WNBA championship. Nor were the DePauw Tigers, who tagged along for the visit after they went 34-0, winning the women's DIII 2013 championship.

No, it wasn't a select group of young children, who feasted their eyes on President Barack Obama and then intermingled with players from the Fever on the President's basketball court as part of the First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign.

Heck, it wasn't even the President either,who got to take 10 minutes away from talks about Syria to focus on positive achievements of others.

The biggest winners on Friday were women -- all women, said Fever coach Lin Dunn.

"Mr. President, the last thing I want to say is, I want to thank you personally, you and the First Lady, for all you do to empower women," Dunn said. "You have no idea. Every day, you both send a strong message that little girls can do anything they want to do, and they can be anything they want to be."

Obama added: "That's the truth."

Dunn's statement came during a ceremony that usually features Obama cracking jokes with the team, which he did, but in limited manner. Instead, the President spent most of his time praising the role models across the WNBA.

"I was mentioning backstage, the WNBA generally inspires a lot of young people," Obama said. "I occasionally coach Sasha's basketball team, and for her to have wonderful role models like this who work hard, know how to play like a team, are incredibly poised and competitors but also show good sportsmanship -- that's the kind of models you want for your children."

"To have that support from the top is amazing," January said. "He supports our game, he supports women and empowerment of women and that's huge for us. That's what we're about. That's what we want to do for the young women coming up."

"I think President Obama and First Lady Obama, they're so in-tune with what's going on. The obesity, Let's Move!, campaign and all the different things they're involved in are really important for young girls," said Catchings, who is averaging 17 points and seven rebounds in five games this season and has her own foundation called Catch The Stars.

Obama demonstrated how in-tune he was with the WNBA by recounting the Fever's injury-riddled run to the WNBA Finals.

"It looked the team might be in real trouble, and then players like Erin Philips came alive," Obama said. "They stormed back, won the game then the series, earning a spot in the Finals.

"That's when you had your "Hoosiers" moment. To be fair, you have a lot more court time under your belts than the team from Hickory High. But you came into the finals as underdogs. The Minnesota Lynx were the defending champions. They had won the season series 2-0."